


a nation of rats

by arbitrarily



Category: Prime Suspect (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 20:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/613958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re either on the take, or the take’s on you: Detectives Calderon and Blando’s shared history in narcotics. <i>Written November 2011</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a nation of rats

**Author's Note:**

> This whole thing basically stemmed from a single line of dialogue in an episode when it was mentioned that Lou and Augie used to work narcotics together, and then sort of snowballed into a bigger premise where, hey! what if one of them had been a dirty cop?! This was the result, haha.

  
  
  
  
  


> When I was your age they would say we can become cops, or criminals. Today, what I'm saying to you is this -- 
> 
> when you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference? 
> 
> _THE DEPARTED_   
> 

  
  
  
  
  
  
(Lou runs.  
  
He coughs blood, but he runs.  
  
His pace against the pavement matches the pounding of his heart.  
  
He runs).  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Lou buys a pack of smokes from a Korean deli down by the docks. Air’s humid, stinks of fish; the starched collar of his shirt has already wilted.  
  
This is a long while back. This is before homicide, but still NYPD, still Midtown.   
  
 This is his third summer gone detective, but his first summer in narco -- his first summer as Augie’s partner.   
  
This is the summer when he is distracted, reading signs into everything, a continuous side effect from a Catholic upbringing.   
  
He is reading into everything. The pack of gulls that form the shape of a triangle as they stand sentry just offshore in Montauk, watching the waves as they would noisily meet their feet only to silently retreat with the tide. That meant something.  
  
Tio Nondo quits serving the sweet tea with the raspberries congealing at the bottom of the glass at Mama Casa’s, the little Puerto Rican joint near his studio apartment. That meant something, too.   
  
Augie asks about the crucifix Lou’s got hanging ‘round his neck one night, one ride back to the station. Lou fingers the gold as Augie makes a sloppy sign of the cross, his hands off the wheel in the space of those few seconds, and Lou touches his cross, he touches gold, and that was a sign too, that was a sign, though he still isn’t sure of what.  
  
Can’t knock tradition, my man, he tells Augie. And Augie snorts, his hands back on the wheel.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Augie’s a different kinda detective than Lou.  
  
Augie is all-American male, a botched football scholarship on account of a botched pass and a botched knee operation. The PD was never a primary destination for him, and Lou likes the way the lie fits him when he says he always wanted to be a cop.  
  
He can’t remember what he wanted to do before he fell into this.  
  
He can remember what he didn’t want.  
  
And there’s another difference:  
  
Augie was a prep school cocksucker while Lou hoofed it down to August Martin High in Queens.  
  
Much like chewed food, LT likes to joke, you all wind up in the same place.   
  
Biology, digestion, the breaking down of solids into liquids -- they all wind up in the same place.   
  
The first day he met him, they got drunk off cheap tequila at three in the afternoon. Augie’s a cheap date. Doesn’t take much to get him hammered, but he’s good in that he’ll plateau there for awhile. Lou learns this.   
  
You have to learn your partner. You have to build a rhythm.  
  
Why you become a cop, huh? he asked Augie.  
  
Bleary-eyed and fiddling with a salt shaker, he pointed a finger at Lou.  
  
It’s detective, he said. And then, I have no fucking idea.   
  
What the fuck else was there to do, huh?  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He’d repeat those words, but later.  
  
Augie would say, What the fuck else was there to do, huh? but his tongue wouldn’t be wet with stale lime and Lou would know this for a fact.   
  
His mouth would be hot when he said it (What the fuck else was there to do, huh?) and it would be just as rhetorical as the first time he said it -- that dive bar where you rent the pool tables by the hour, where they only got Bud on tap but the liquor is cheap -- but he wouldn’t be talking about the job.  
  
You fucking son of a bitch, is what Lou would say, but he’d say it against Augie’s jaw, he’d let the sound get muffled there. He’d let Augie drag his hands down his side and pull him forward by the hips.  
  
What the fuck else was there to do, huh? he’d say.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
They build a good rapport. They’re two men with a good sense of humor, an ability to get even the most squirrely of dealers to agree to talk with them. Even if just for a second.   
  
Augie’s a good guy. A better shot than Lou, but Lou is faster.   
  
Motherfucking antelope jack rabbit, Augie gasps the first -- and only -- time he joins Lou for a run through Central Park.  
  
Catch you on my way back around, ya pussy, he calls to Augie as he runs on.   
  
He runs.  
  
He doesn’t think about what Augie’s breath sounded like beside him as they ran, labored and heavy, panting at the end.  
  
He doesn’t think.  
  
He runs.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
They bust a Persian coke dealer.  
  
Lou enters his stash into evidence.  
  
Come trial, the evidence is gone. The stash is gone.  
  
Lou would like the record to reflect that it was then, and no time sooner, that he even considered there could be a problem.  
  
 Let the record reflect, he said considered.  
  
He said could be.  
  
He never said there was a problem.  
  
There’s no problem, he said. Misplaced evidence.  
  
Happens all the goddamn time.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Augie shoots an unarmed man. Augie decks Lou in the face.  
  
Augie’s a good guy. A better shot, but Lou is faster.  
  
In the file Lou fills out when they return to the office, he states that the suspect had reached inside his coat, as though drawing a weapon. He types the words quickly, as though they are less offensive when committed to the page as quickly as possible. He doesn’t proofread it before he turns it in. He knows what a lie looks like, and a man is always more careful with a lie than the truth.   
  
Lieutenant asks after the shiner, and Lou almost blushes, a little schoolgirl in confessional. He tells him it was the suspect; he tells him this with a straight face, and he relaxes: the dead can’t testify.  
  
You let him get that close? LT asks.  
  
My mistake, Lou says.  
  
Augie leaves an extra cup of coffee on his desk the following morning. It’s cold when Lou sips it, but Lou likes that. He even lets Augie dog the Jets as he perches on the corner of his desk.  
  
It makes him wonder how early Augie got here. It makes him wonder what kind of sign this is, what apology a cold cup of coffee and a jab about the Jets makes when offered by a man like Augie.   
  
It’s still summer, and Lou is still preoccupied with signs.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Lou had said: you know this guy? You fucking know this guy?  
  
And then the gun went off.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(Lou runs. The warehouse fades into the distance.  
  
He runs. Plausible deniability.  
  
He runs).  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Narco’s infamous for its corruption. Everyone knows that. Next to racketeering in the gangland days of yore, it’s unlikely to find more cops, more dicks, on the take than in narco.  
  
Internal Affairs warns you on that front. They tell you keep an eye out.  
  
They don’t offer much guidance if it’s you on the take.  
  
Lou’s not the one on the take.  
  
He runs.  
  
Augie says: What the fuck else was there to do, huh?  
  
Lou buys a pack of smokes from the Korean deli down by the docks and Augie waits in the car.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Lou gets the jump on Augie. Lou intercepts a tip that in the wrong hands woulda been curtains for the PD career of one Augie Blando.  
  
So he goes. His night off, and he’s down at the docks. He passes the Korean deli and he doesn’t buy any cigarettes. He finds the warehouse, empty, abandoned, and he doesn’t trust the rickety old elevator inside, choosing the fire escape stairs instead.  
  
He finds Augie on the roof. Augie’s face falls. Lou can see that, even in the gloaming.  
  
You can’t be here, man, he says.   
  
Lou can feel his t-shirt sticking to his back, wet with sweat. This is his second summer as Augie’s partner, his second summer of narc work, and a flock of birds flies over them, a V-formation, but Lou doesn’t notice. Lou can feel his temper, an uncharacteristic slow build when it has come to Augie, finally crest.  
  
He charges him, and Augie kicks his legs out from under him.  
  
He goes down hard. The gravel scattered over the rooftop scratches his cheek and the palms of his hands as he tries to rise, but Augie won’t let him. Augie won’t let him up. He kicks him in the ribs, he kicks him hard, and Lou gasps noisily, his breath wheezy already, and Augie is talking, Augie’s telling him something, but Lou can’t hear it.   
  
Lou knows what it feels like to have the shit beat out of you, but this feels all wrong.   
  
Augie is begging. Augie is hauling Lou to his feet, and Lou swings at him -- missing the first time, and then catching Augie square in the jaw. He spins away, stumbling on his feet, but he comes back.   
  
He grabs Lou by the jaw, and there’s blood at the corner of his mouth.   
  
You gotta run, he says harshly, and Lou understands it now, understands that these were the same words Augie said when he kicked him, when he brought him down.  
  
You fucking asshole, Lou says anyway, and he reaches to punch him again, but Augie’s still got him by the jaw, he’s got him by the throat, and he presses his forehead against his and breathes hard (labored and heavy, panting at the end).   
  
I’m gonna end it, Augie stammers, I’m gonna end it and I’m gonna be good we’re gonna be real good I’m gonna end it but you gotta go you gotta run.  
  
Augie kisses him, all open mouth and teeth, and Lou’s jaw aches when he opens his mouth to him. Headlights approach; they illuminate the warehouse for just a beat before they are shut off, darkness stretching yet again.  
  
Lou runs.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(Lou can taste blood in his mouth. He can’t remember if it’s his or if it’s Augie’s. He can’t remember what that means if he thinks their blood tastes the same.  
  
He runs.  
  
For the first time in a long time, Lou runs like he is being chased.  
  
He spits.  
  
He still can taste him).  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The first time he touched him was the first time he thought he knew the truth.  
  
The truth: missing evidence, a dead drug dealer, Augie’s phone, the calls dialed and received, the texts left, the missing evidence, the dead drug dealer, IA warns you on this front.  
  
You’re in over your head buddy, Lou said.  
  
Only way to be, Augie had replied, glib, too revealing. Augie disguised discomfort with feigned good humor. Lou learned this. Lou had learned him.  
  
Augie’s apartment was sparse and undecorated. He had his high school football trophies on the floor near the television, hardly a shrine but evidence of an aborted bid at unpacking and interior design. It’s his first winter in narco, his first winter as Augie’s partner.   
  
You on the take? he asked Augie, and Augie only shrugged.  
  
You fucking son of a bitch, Lou said, but he said it against Augie’s jaw. His mouth passed over a day’s worth of stubble, and Augie dragged his hands down Lou’s side and grabbed him by the hips.  
  
What the fuck else was there to do, huh? he said.  
  
Augie kissed him open and earnest, equal parts natural and clumsy -- as though kissing a man was something new for him, but the openness, the earnestness, was all instinct.   
  
Lou brought him off with his mouth, the leather couch creaking under their shared weight. Augie made him choke, gripped him too tight by the back of the head, and Lou bruised Augie’s hip in turn.   
  
Augie chanted the same two words -- shut up, shut up, shut up -- over and over again as he fisted Lou’s cock, and Lou kept his mouth pressed open to Augie’s throat, hiding his own noises from him, able to still taste his cologne there.  
  
Lou’s gold crucifix fell off that night. Got lost in the cushions of Augie’s couch. He wouldn’t notice until mid-afternoon of the next day. He’d find himself too embarrassed to ask Augie.  
  
Something he would never learn:  
  
Augie found it. Augie kept it.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Something Lou does learn about Augie:  
  
He’s true to his word.  
  
That second summer he ends it.  
  
He told the truth. They’re gonna be real good.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
You and Augie used to work narcotics? Timoney asks. She’s got that hat on, got the sun in her eyes because she squints when she looks over at Lou.  
  
Yeah sure, he answers. He jams his hands in his pockets and leans back on his heels. He surveys the block, lets his eyes wander over a parked car, a car that won’t start, a car speeding straight dead center down the road.   
  
She taps a red lollipop against her back molars.  
  
What was that like? she asks.  
  
Lou watches the car swerve out the way of an approaching bicyclist. At one point, he thinks, that would have been a sign.   
  
He shrugs.  
  
I used to smoke then, he says, and Timoney strikes the candy against her teeth once more.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 _fin._


End file.
